Progressive solons push for expanded manual audit of 2010 poll results

Submitted by mkbyn on Mon, 05/31/2010 - 11:11am

Progressive solons in the House of Representatives filed a joint resolution on May 28, 2010 for the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to conduct an expanded manual audit covering 10 percent of the total number of precincts of all legislative districts in each province or city for elective positions from the president down to the city or municipal councilors.

The joint resolution calls on the Comelec to conduct the expanded manual audit on June 14, 2010 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and to announce the results on or before June 21, 2010.

Joint Resolution 57 was filed by party-list Reps. Satur Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño, Neri Javier Colmenares, Liza Maza, Luzviminda Ilagan, Rafael Mariano, Joel Maglungsod, and Raymond Palatino stated that the Election Automation Law (RA 9369) mandates a random manual audit (RMA) in at least one precinct per congressional district randomly chosen by the Comelec.

The solons cited the following questions that remain unanswered since many of the safeguards provided in the law and Comelec rules and regulations have not been faithfully implemented:

(1) Issues on the absence of the source code review and the related issue of Smartmatic’s partnership with another company, the Dominion Corporation;

(2) The (compact flash) CF card failure a few days before the elections leading to the recall and reconfiguration of thousands of CF card which were not duly monitored by the Comelec and election watchdogs;

(3) Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines or transmission failure in many areas throughout the country;

(4) Discrepancies in the dates of transmission of many PCOS machines and the reported pre shading of ballots.

(5) Discrepancies in the manual and transmitted election returns;

(6) The failure to use safeguards such as the failure to use the ultraviolet lamps during elections, and the lack of independent digital signatures from the BEI members; and

(7) The proliferation of election operators allegedly offering to generate votes for candidates in exchange for millions of pesos.

“These issues have further damaged the credibility of the automated elections and the Comelec and must be resolved to help satisfy the concerns raised by the public and to ensure that the automated elections shall not be wracked by the same problems in the 2013 polls.” #